Under a DACA amnesty, American taxpayers would be left with a $26 billion bill. About one in five DACA illegal aliens, after an amnesty, would end up on food stamps, while at least one in seven would go on Medicaid. Since DACA’s inception under Obama, more than 2,100 illegal aliens have been kicked off the program after it was revealed that they were either criminals or gang members. JOHN BINDER

Tuesday, January 19, 2016

UNDER BARACK OBAMA, TWO-THIRDS OF ALL JOBS WENT TO FOREIGN BORN, BOTH LEGAL AND ILLEGAL.ECONOMIC INEQUALITY IS ! ! ! FOUR ! ! ! TIMES GREATER UNDER OBAMA THAN BUSH.

"The poll comes amid a slew of other reports detailing an immense drop in the living standards of a significant section of the US population, a component of the growth of social inequality more broadly."

Survey finds a majority of Americans unable to pay for major unexpected expenses

By Nick Barrickman9 January 2016

A new survey put out by the personal finance management site Bankrate.com on Wednesday found that more than half of Americans could not weather a sudden financial crisis without having to borrow money from friends and family or being forced to reduce the amount spent on other items such as dining out, paying cable or cell phone bills, or other basic features of a “middle class” lifestyle.

The survey, conducted last month among a pool of 1,000 Americans in conjunction with Princeton Survey Research Associates International, found that only 37 percent of those surveyed would be able to pay an emergency expense of $1,000, such as an emergency room visit or the cost of repairing a broken down vehicle, out of pocket.

Sixty-three percent of those surveyed would not be able to cover such a sudden expense without either cutting down on expenses elsewhere, borrowing or resorting to credit. The survey found that nearly four in 10 Americans had suffered such a financial setback in 2015.

“Without an adequate rainy-day fund, we are all living on a very slippery financial slope,” Gail Cunningham of the National Foundation for Credit Counseling told Bankrate.com. “The unexpected, unplanned expense is going to rear its ugly head and usually at the most inopportune time…Things as small as a flat tire or one trip to the emergency room can wreck the budgets of those who do not have an adequate amount in their savings account,” she said.

For Americans making less than $30,000 per year, only 23 percent would be able to cover such a sudden expense on their own. This was contrasted by nearly 60 percent of those making over $75,000 annually who could say the same. Nine percent making $30,000 or below stated that they did not know how they would cover such expenses, meaning that they were one expensive setback away from personal financial ruin.

The poll comes amid a slew of other reports detailing an immense drop in the living standards of a significant section of the US population, a component of the growth of social inequality more broadly.

Since the 2008 financial collapse and the subsequent economic “recovery” in 2009, 95 percent of all wealth gains have gone to the top 1 percent in society. A report released in November by the St. Louis Federal Reserve showed that Americans’ personal savings in 2015 were half of what the average was in the early 1980s.

A US Federal Reserve report released in 2014 found that nearly six in 10 Americans had lost all or part of their savings due to the financial impact of the 2008 economic crisis, while a 2015 study by GOBankingrates.com revealed that the majority of Americans have less than $1,000 in savings to their name. A report released the Pew Research firm last month revealed that the number of middle-income homes as a portion of the population had largely vanished in the span of a few decades.

The figures come as the US Federal Reserve has begun raising interest rates for banks and other financial institutions, which will likely lead to further difficulty for individuals who rely upon credit in order to finance their costs of living.

The expenses eating away at the typical individual’s savings read like essential items for living in modern society. According to Bankrate.com, the largest expense for one-third of all Americans outside of food and shelter consisted of utilities such as water, electricity or phone service. For those over the age of 50, one in five cited medical bills as their largest co

Placating Americans with Fake Immigration Law Enforcement

By Michael Cutler

FrontPageMag.com, December 4, 2015

Therefore the Visa Waiver Program should have been terminated after the terror attacks of 9/11 yet it has continually been expanded.

It is clear that the overarching goal of a succession of administrations and many members of Congress, irrespective of political party affiliation, is to keep our borders open and take no meaningful action to stop that flow of aliens into the United States.

. . .

The obvious question is why the Visa Waiver Program is considered so sacrosanct that even though it defies the advice and findings of the 9/11 Commission no one has the moral fortitude to call for simply terminating this dangerous program.

The answer can be found in the incestuous relationship between the Chamber of Commerce and its subsidiary, the Corporation for Travel Promotion, now doing business as Brand USA.

The Chamber of Commerce has arguably been the strongest supporter of the Visa Waiver Program, which currently enables aliens from 38 countries to enter the United States without first obtaining a visa.

The U.S. State Department provides a thorough explanation of the Visa Waiver Program on its website.

Incredibly, the official State Department website also provides a link, “Discover America,” on that website which relates to the website of The Corporation for Travel Promotion, which is affiliated with the travel industries that are a part of the “Discover America Partnership.

much more here:

Democratic Party demagogy in South Carolina debate

By Andre Damon 18 January 2016

Sunday’s Democratic presidential debate in Charleston, South Carolina was an exercise in demagogy and bad faith, with all three candidates—former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Senator Bernie Sanders and former Governor Martin O’Malley—using populist rhetoric to promote the false claim that the Democratic Party is a vehicle for opposing Wall Street and the domination of American society by the financial elite.

Led by Sanders, who calls himself a “socialist,” the candidates sought to outdo one another in painting themselves as opponents of social inequality. Their rhetoric was clearly a response to what they see as growing opposition to the political establishment and the capitalist system, particularly among workers and young people.

The debate took place against the backdrop of a deepening economic crisis, following two weeks of massive losses on US stock exchanges and the announcement by Walmart that it will close 269 stores and slash 16,000 jobs.

Only hours before the debate, the British charity Oxfam released a study showing that the world’s 62 richest people controlled more wealth last year than the bottom half of humanity, some 3.5 billion people. The report revealed that the wealth of these 62 people had increased by 44 percent since 2010—to $1.76 trillion—while the wealth of the world’s poorest half had fallen by 41 percent.

The alienation of broad sections of the American population from the entire political establishment and the growth of anti-capitalist sentiment have manifested themselves in growing support for Sanders, who talks of a “political revolution” in the interests of the “middle class and working families.” Sanders has been gaining on Clinton in national polls and is within striking distance of defeating Clinton in both the Iowa Caucus on February 1 and the New Hampshire primary on February 9.

Sanders sought to take the offensive throughout Sunday’s debate. He called for breaking up the biggest US banks and boasted that he did not accept money from Wall Street, unlike Hilary Clinton, who, he pointed out more than once, received $600,000 in speaking fees from Goldman Sachs in a single year.

Clinton replied, “There’s no daylight on the basic premise that there should be no bank too big to fail and no individual too powerful to jail.” Former Governor Martin O'Malley declared, “I have put forward a plan that would actually put cops back on the beat of Wall Street.”

Amid such denunciations of the subordination of the government to Wall Street, what none of the candidates cared to mention was the fact that the sitting president, who has spent the last seven years looking after the interests of the banks, is the leader of their own party. All three of the debaters repeatedly declared their support for Obama.

Even as the Treasury and Federal Reserve funneled trillions of dollars in virtually free cash to the banks and hedge funds, the Obama White House made the expansion of poverty-wage jobs the basis of its 2009 auto restructuring and supported the gutting of workers’ pension benefits in the Detroit bankruptcy.

Under Obama, not a single Wall Street banker has been prosecuted for the criminal activities that triggered the 2008 financial meltdown and threw millions of workers into poverty.

But when asked about his relationship to the current president, Sanders declared, “In 2006, when I ran for the Senate, Senator Barack Obama was kind enough to campaign for me. In 2008, I did my best to see that he was elected, and in 2012, I worked as hard as I could to see that he was reelected.”

Sanders did not attempt to square this support for a pro-Wall Street president with his supposed socialist politics.

Later in the debate, Sanders reiterated his campaign call for a “political revolution” to rein in the “handful of billionaires who control economic and political life in this country.” But of what does this “political revolution” consist?

Sanders has repeatedly rejected any call for public ownership of industry, telling ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos that very morning that he opposed the nationalization of the oil companies or utilities.

Sanders’ “revolution” is nothing of the kind. It excludes any change in basic economic relations or even the party in power, which, as he himself admits, is dominated by the financial elite. He evidently wants the public to believe that like the Walls of Jericho, Wall Street will come tumbling down with one blast of hot air.

Beyond his rhetorical denunciations of the banks and invocations of “socialism,” what Sanders is proposing is nothing more than what was not so long ago considered run-of-the-mill liberal Democratic politics. But even his modest reform proposals will be dropped entirely if Sanders is elected president, just as Clinton and Obama broke their campaign pledges and countless other Democrats before them.

The real character of the candidates was revealed when they spoke on international affairs. All three accepted entirely and without question the framework and underlying premises of US foreign policy, dominated by military violence and war crimes around the world. Sanders called on “countries like Saudi Arabia”—a bloody semi-feudal dictatorship—to intervene in Syria “with our support and the support of other major countries”—a further escalation of the US-led war that has already killed hundreds of thousands of people and turned millions more into homeless refugees.

Despite the candidates’ populist blather, the reality underscored by the debate is that the Democratic Party is an imperialist, pro-war party whose aim is to defend and expand the wealth and power of the billionaire oligarchs who dominate American society.